


the circles of hell are roundabouts and marcus cutter is at the wheel

by Whelm



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, Road Trips, au where kepler knows how perceptive jacobi is, unhealthy relationship dynamics, warren j kepler dissociates while holding hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 06:30:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whelm/pseuds/Whelm
Summary: How sweet, Kepler thought. They’re worried.





	the circles of hell are roundabouts and marcus cutter is at the wheel

He wished the bags under his eyes could be less visible, that he could erase the tension in his shoulders, that he could appear as calm and collected as unusual. Already he saw Jacobi eyeing him, taking in the set of his jaw, looking for his hands. Maxwell’s eyes flickered off him, sometimes landing on Jacobi, sometimes looking toward the window.

“I’m going to be gone, for a week.” He tried to keep the note of strain from his voice.

“A week?” Maxwell said. She frowned at Jacobi, who shrugged, raising his eyes to stare directly into Kepler’s.

“A week,” Kepler repeated, quieter. “You can consider this your first genuine Goddard vacation. I don’t trust the two of you on your own here.” It wasn’t true, not really, but he didn’t want them snooping around in his absence either. Bored SI-5 agents were dangerous SI-5 agents.

Well, they were always dangerous, but Kepler had a feeling that, if left to their own devices for too long they’d a threat to themselves and others.

“What are we supposed to do for a week?”

He was oddly touched by this. “Have fun, Doctor. Do you have nothing else to occupy your time?”

Maxwell made a disgruntled noise. “Sure, little projects, code tests, nothing that could hold my attention for a week.”

“Jacobi?”

“I mean, it’s not her fault, Sir. You call us out on missions at three in the morning sometimes. We can’t exactly keep a full planner.”

That was true. Kepler locked his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels. “Come up with something, then. You have a week.”

“No contact?”

“No contact.”

Jacobi’s clear, blank expression sharpened to a displeased point. “Are you—”

_ “Classified, _ Mister Jacobi.”

“Right.” Jacobi stood. Maxwell looked up at him, and then back to Kepler.

_ How sweet,  _ Kepler thought. _ They’re worried. _

He knew that it only spoke to his inability to hide his own distress, but there was some soft part of him he hadn’t strangled yet which took immense pleasure in the unsureness of his agents in this situation. It relished the way Jacobi had gone quiet and wary, likely annoyed at being kept in the dark, and the way Maxwell kept looking at him, like he was going to say this was a joke, like he was going to reveal he’d just been messing with her for the past fifteen minutes.

_ No, Doctor,  _ _ I am not testing you,  _ Kepler thought.

“Right,” Maxwell said, following Jacobi’s lead and standing, eyebrows still furrowed.

“Have a safe trip,” Jacobi said, hand already finding Maxwell’s arm, a sort of blocky, forced apathy in his voice. Kepler smiled.

“I have no control over that,” he said.

“Die, then.”

 

* * *

 

 

Miranda Pryce was already sitting in the car when Kepler got in. He didn’t notice at first, because he saw that there was nobody in the passenger’s seat, but when he opened the door, Cutter was looking up at him, dark eyes almost soft, an embarassed smile on his face. He made a little hissing noise which ended with a click. 

“Oooh, sorry, Warren. Wrong seat. You’re in the back.”

Kepler closed the door, and he stepped back, and he climbed in beside Miranda Pryce.

 

* * *

 

 

A younger Kepler sat at the wheel, traveling down a long and empty road with Cutter—going by a different name at the time—at his elbow. He was twenty-two, a recent dropout of Columbia’s Law School program, but he’d been enjoying being courted by Cutter’s company for the past few years.

And this, this was his first genuine mission. Directly beside his employer who, Kepler had begun to decipher, played a bigger role in the company than he let on. There was a sort of flash, a smug pleasure in his eyes whenever he said that his department in Goddard was communications. This, and how he could do just about anything he liked—well, it made Kepler suspicious, and excited.

“I’m told you like Shakespeare,” Cutter had said, smiling beneath his opaque sunglasses, leaning back in the passenger’s seat in a gesture that Kepler had mistaken for trusting, in a tone that Kepler had taken for friendly, for casual.

“Yessir,” Kepler said, promptly. He stilled, quieted, waited for Cutter to take this conversation where he wanted it (he tried, a few times before, to take the lead of the conversation himself—try to give Cutter information he thought might be appealing—but, no, it only made his lips thin and his eyes narrow).

“That is wonderful,” Cutter had said, catching each syllable in his teeth. “Just fantastic. Everyone says it’s overdone—but, there’s something about it isn’t there? It wouldn’t still be around if it wasn’t the best. Things that aren’t important have a way of...dying out.”

“Yes,” Kepler replied, “Sir.”

“You know when he’s at his most powerful? When he writes most of his best work?”

Kepler waited a moment, to see if this was rhetorical. It was not, and Cutter waited patiently for Kepler to respond.

“His soliloquies, I think,” Kepler said after a moment. “When the stage clears, and there’s only one person on stage. The intensity of—”

“Yes,” Cutter said. “Give me a soliloquy.”

Kepler’s not stupid enough to say “Now?” so he starts spilling pentameter all over the dashboard.

 

* * *

 

 

 

“Give me your hand,” Miranda Pryce says, and Kepler extends his arm for her. She grips him around the wrist and starts pushing, pressing the skin of his palm, feeling out the muscles. Her hands are cold, colder than Jacobi’s or Maxwell’s. She feels like a doctor more than she feels like a person, which is a silly thing to think, but nonetheless it crosses his mind.

The windows in the front of the car are just slightly open, and so warm spring air keeps pouring in, and Cutter’s wearing his driving sunglasses again. Kepler keeps his shoulder blades to the pleather of the car, resisting the urge to turn and have a look at whatever Pryce is doing with his arm, no matter what muscle she picks at. If he focuses on his breathing, the rumble of the road, and the flashing midwest scenery, he can almost forget it’s his hand at all, which dulls the reaction considerably.

“Would you like some music?” Cutter asks.

Kepler turns his head to Pryce with an eyebrow raised and she scowls without looking at him.

“Don’t look to me for direction,” she snaps, pressing down hard on his wrist. His fingers jerk and curl without his command.

In the rear-view mirror, Cutter’s dark lips twist. “I’m not asking Miranda, Warren. I  _ know _ how she feels about it. I’m asking you.”

“I wouldn’t mind.”

“Fantastic,” Cutter all but purrs, and with a snap of his wrist there’s a wooden clicking noise coming from the speakers all around them. It’s the standard shave-and-a-haircut, but quick and high, with no two-bits.

_ “Come iiiin!,” _  the speakers call. “Well well well, look who’s here! I haven’t seen you in many a year!”

Cutter smiles, and the black of his sunglasses waits for Kepler in the mirror. “I just love,”

_“If!_ ” There’s static in the speakers and piano keys start twinkling in Kepler’s ears.  
“The classics,”

_ “I!” _

“Don’t you, Warren?”

“ _ I—Knew you were comin’ I’d have baked a cake, baked a cake, baked a cake!” _

“Oh yes,” Kepler says. He no longer has to try to remove himself from his arm, he’s barely there anymore. “Absolutely.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> this was really more of an exercise in getting to understand the characters from last year that i unearthed and lo, i found to be passable and in a form, complete


End file.
